1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to Web based marketing and, more particularly, to a method and system for monitoring and collecting user responses to Web based content provided by Web servers.
2. Background Information
On-line advertising and content provision has grown tremendously since the inception of the Internet and on-line services. Users can access a wide variety of information associated with their interests by using the Internet and accessing Web sites generated by providers. A computer equipped with a program called a browser, such as Netscape Navigator from Netscape Corporation, makes it a simple task to traverse the vast network of information available on the Internet and, specifically, its subpart known as the “World Wide Web.”
The architecture of the Web follows a conventional client-server model. The terms “client” and “server” are used to refer to a computer's general role as a requester of data (the client) or provider of data (the server). Under the Web environment, Web browsers reside in clients and specially formatted “Web documents” reside on Internet (Web) servers. Web clients and Web servers communicate using a protocol called “Hyper Text Transfer Protocol” (HTTP).
In operation, a browser opens a connection to a server and initiates a request for a document or a Web page including content. The server delivers the requested document or Web page, typically in the form coded in a standard “Hyper Text Markup Language” (HTML) format. After the document or Web page is delivered, the connection is closed and the browser displays the document or Web page to the user.
The Internet consists of a worldwide computer network that communicates using well defined protocol known as the Internet Protocol (IP). Computer systems and servers that are directly connected to the Internet each have an unique address consisting of four numbers separated by periods such as “123.456.0.3”. To simplify Internet addressing, a “Domain Name System” was created that allows users to access Internet resources with a simpler alphanumeric naming system. For example, the name “capitalone.com” is the name for a computer system or Web server operated by Capital One®.
To further define the addresses of resources on the Internet, a Uniform Resource Locator system was created that uses a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) as a descriptor that specifically defines a type of Internet resource and its location. URLs have the following format: “resource-type://domain.address/path-name.” The “resource-type” defines the type of Internet resource. Web documents, for example, are identified by the resource type “http”, which indicates the protocol used to access the document.
To access a document on the Web, the user enters a URL for the Web document into a browser program executing on a client system with a connection to the Internet. The Web browser then sends a request in accordance with the HTTP protocol to the Web server that has the Web document using the URL. The Web server responds to the request by transmitting the requested object to the client. In most cases, the object is a plain text document containing text (in ASCII) that is written in HTML. Such objects often contain hyperlinks to other Web documents. The Web browser displays the HTML document on the screen for the user and the hyperlinks to other Web documents are emphasized in some fashion such that the user can select the hyperlink.
In some instances, the HTML document may contain data from more than one server. For example, remote text and images may be retrieved from remote servers and integrated into a Web document by a client system. One server may provide an image file, while another server may provide text information to the client system over a network such as the Internet. Different techniques are available to display these types of composite Web documents. For example, a program called a servlet executing on one of the servers may combine data from the various servers referenced in a selected Web document and transmit the composite Web document to the client. In other configurations, the client may utilize a program called an applet, which may be transmitted to the client from one of the servers, to access the multiple servers offering parts of the composite and to build the composite Web document.
Generally, users view the content delivered in the Web pages and may select hyperlinks to other sub pages of a Web site, or to entirely different Web sites. Providers associate the users “browsing” these Web pages as potential consumers for the products and services they provide. By simply providing a Web server having information on a providers' product and service offerings and a customer database, and linking the Web server to the Web, providers may track user interactions with the Web server including visits, sales, buying trends and product/service preferences—all at the user level. Providers may then present or offer its customers with products and services they are most likely to buy—on an individual basis. For this reason alone most marketing professionals consider the Web to be one of the best direct marketing tools. In order to gain new, or retain existing, customers, providers need to ensure they present products and services that potential consumers are interested in. Accordingly, the importance of target advertising and target content provision has become an important role in the way providers conduct business over the Internet.
One conventional technique associated with target advertising is the use of advertising banners presented on existing Web pages generated by providers. When a user accesses a Web page associated with a provider, using a Web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer, a banner advertising the provider's products or services appears on the Web page. This banner may be presented by the Web page's provider, or may be provided by a third party advertisement server. When an interested user selects the advertisement (by “clicking through” on the banner) the user is generally forwarded to another Web page or site associated with the advertisement. This page or site may be the third party advertiser's home page. The success of the advertisement is based upon the user's response, in this case, the user “clicking through” the advertisement or banner, to receive more information on the content advertised.
Conventional implementations of target advertising attempt to present appropriate information, or advertisements, to selected users, such that the probability of that user being interested in the advertisement increases. These implementations monitor and collect limited user response information, along with information associated with the advertisement presented to the users. The user response information generally includes user identification data such as, user ID, domain type, location, employer information and other general information associated with the user. The advertisement information generally includes the particular advertisement presented, the number of times the advertisement was presented, the advertisements selected by a user, and the Web pages on which these advertisements were presented. User profiles may be created that associate user interests based on the types of advertisements and Web pages the users view. The collected information is analyzed to associate a success value with a particular advertisement based on the user information and the advertisement data. For example, a successful advertisement may be declared if the advertisement produced a sufficient number of “click throughs” from a plurality of users.
However, in the event an advertisement is not declared successful, new advertisements or banners may be presented to selected users, based upon their profile. For example, users interested in athletics or sports, based on their profile, may be targeted with advertisements associated with athletic apparel, while users interested in music may be presented with advertisements associated with available concert tickets or audio CDs.
Advertisements are adjusted by replacing the presented advertisement with another image/text object stored in a database. That is, when a target advertisement is to be changed, a replacement advertisement image/text object is retrieved from a database and positioned in the accessed Web page the previous advertisement was located. Accordingly, entire banners are replaced each time a new advertisement is needed to target a selected user. Furthermore, when the objects stored in the database are no longer effective, these objects must be modified and updated, which may take a significant amount of time.
Conventional implementations of target content provision for Web sites are also associated with the disadvantage of time consumption. The conventional techniques adjusting Web site renderings is a time consuming process which incorporates human intervention and an extreme amount of information. To evaluate the success of content presented on Web sites, the providers of the site generally collect user response data similar to that described above. That is, user information such as cookies, and general content information is monitored and collected. A database is created of this collected information, which includes massive amounts of data. The information is later analyzed either by an analytical engine, or through user intervention, and resultant data is created expressing the likelihood of successful content for various profiles of target users. Decisions are made on the type of content that should be provided, and the content is manually adjusted. This includes changing a Web site's presentation, or the content provided by the site, for example changing a loan percentage rate or incentives on a type of product for sale. This process can take days, weeks or sometimes months, depending upon the resources available to a provider.
Associated with the conventional implementations of on-line advertising is the billing process in which Web page providers charge advertising providers for allowing advertisements to be presented on the Web page. For example, advertisement banners displayed on Web pages served by a Web server are generally provided by third party advertisement servers. The provider of the Web server displaying the banners generally bill the advertisement servers for each rendering of a Web page that includes the advertisement banner. A disadvantage to this conventional process is that advertisement servers may be billed for banners that are never seen by a user browsing a rendered Web page that includes the banner. This may occur when the banners are located in positions on a Web page that rarely get viewed by users, such as the “bottom” half of a Web page. Users may leave a Web page without ever viewing the banner provided by an advertisement server, while the Web server serving the Web page may still charge the advertisement server for a banner being displayed on a rendered Web page.
Accordingly, although conventional on-line target advertising and content provision techniques allow adjustments to be made on downloaded documents in order to target selected users, they lack the ability to monitor and collect detailed user response data associated with content that is actually visible to the users when browsing the downloaded documents. Furthermore, although conventional on-line advertising techniques enable providers to advertise their products and services on third party Web sites, they lack the ability to efficiently perform detailed billing based on whether an advertisement was actually in-view when a Web site including the advertisement is rendered.